Creator of Yoon-Suin and other materials. Propounding my half-baked ideas on role playing games. Jotting down and elaborating on ideas for campaigns, missions and adventures. Talking about general industry-related matters. Putting a new twist on gaming.

Thursday, 19 September 2013

Player Creativity Within the D6 for Damage Framework

Yes, there is still MORE TO BE SAID on this topic.

On yesterday's post various people raised the point that having different damage dice for different weapons is intrinsically good because it gives players the chance to make choices and trade-offs.

Picador posts this excellent retort, which I can't really add much to:

I'm a big fan of two-handed weapons giving +1 to attack. That makes them more effective vs. heavy armor (verisimilitude) and mirrors the shield's -1 to AC (balance), making the "shield vs. two-handed weapon" choice one of straightforward defence vs. offence. In a game where bonuses to attack are few and far between (e.g. no Strength bonus, few magical weapons), that +1 is a big deal.

As soon as we start talking about mapping HP damage to weapon size, we're back into the weird incoherence of the "one successful attack roll = one connecting blow / hit points = physical wound capacity" system we grew up with. Much better to give a bonus to attack, representing the various combat advantages bestowed by using a large weapon with two hands (e.g. superior reach, control, and armor piercing ability).

I don't disagree in the slightest, but I also can't help but feel that there is a disadvantage of making trade-offs between weapons too obvious. That is, the difference between a sword which does d8 damage and a dagger which does d4 damage is as plain as the nose on your face. It's a no-brainer. There may be other considerations, but the primary consideration is which does more damage in a fight. I don't find that a particularly interesting choice at all in the context of OD&D, where there are no other real mechanical considerations regarding weapons (the case is different if we are playing Rolemaster or Runequest), but more to the point, I think there is a sense in which removing obvious choices like that encourages thoughtful engagement with the game.

That is, if there is no real mechanical difference between weapons, players have to consider other ways to distinguish between them. Suddenly, the primary distinction between the sword and the dagger ceases to be damage, but the trade-off between the prestige and swagger of wielding a sword versus the usefulness of the concealable dagger. That is not only a more interesting choice but one that draws the player into the game world and his character. He's not thinking about mathematics, but about what his character is actually going to be doing during play.

So, you might say that there is a virtue in forcing players into making non-mechanical choices about the game. The more you restrict differentiation in the maths, the more you encourage creative, engaged thinking with what is "happening". Players are more likely to think about what their weapon actually does as a physical object rather than a simple number. I think that notion is at least worth consideration.

21 comments:

I hear what you're saying, but we already have the obvious mathematical trade-off of shields giving -1 AC and not being usable with two-handed weapons.

Following your philosophy, I would propose getting rid of the shield bonus (or giving -1 AC for any fighting style: two-handed weapon, dual-wielding, sword-and-shield, or single-handed duellist-style with a free hand).

You're right that this gives combat a further level of abstraction and forces players to focus on engagement with the game world in non-game-mechanical ways. It's probably also no less realistic than the default system. After all, modelling the various pluses and minuses of various fighting techniques used against one another is a rat-hole we're all familiar with from the last few generations of "realism"-focused games -- better to hand-wave it and assume that any plausible combat style employed by your character is going to be one that was adopted because it works. Knife-fighting, spear-and-shield, two-handed spear, duelling sword, maul, axe and shield, mounted lance -- it's all window dressing as far as the abstract combat mechanics are concerned.

Maybe it's just my players (mostly very new to D&D/rpgs), but they all seemed to choose weapons based on style, that is, how it fit with their image of their character. For instance, the only fighter in the party carries a short sword as his main melee weapon because stylistically he's an archer. I almost encouraged him to get a sword with more damage potential (I'm using LotFP rules), but... I like that he chose based on non-mechanical reasons without any prompting at all.

I'm sure it helps none of my players seem to be very obsessed with mechanics or power gaming.

The issue I have is that words like "weapons" or "climbing tools" are intended as signifiers telling the player about the kinds of choices they are going to make. I select my weapons based on the types of combat challenges I am going to overcome, and my climbing gear to reflect the types of surfaces I imagine I am going to have to climb. If I go to the "weapon store" in order to prepare for combat challenges, I don't want to be forced to instead have to make choices about climbing or cultural prestige, just like I don't want climbing gear to be differentiated solely by its utility in different battle situations.

Now, we can of course say that we don't want our game to involve meaningful choices in combat, but instead to make the -decision- to engage in combat itself be the meaningful choice, or for the only meaningful choices to be with the environment, etc. But in that case, why is it important to have any differentiation between the types of weapons at all, if the only meaningful difference is whether or not your character is armed? Then, players are naturally directed away from weapon selection and towards the selection of different tools to overcome non-combat challenges.

Yeah, I agree that if the ONLY difference between weapons is how they operate OUTSIDE of combat, you end up swapping your combat-mechanic min-maxing for, say, inventory-based min-maxing. I mean, if I can fight perfectly well using a skinning knife, a climbing axe, or an improvised club, then why would I ever go to the trouble of carrying an expensive, heavy, awkward glaive-guisarme or flail into the dungeon with me?

I appreciate the idea of Chainmail-style abstract combat. But of course, Chainmail also had abstract equipment: you were "Heavy Foot" or "Light Horse", and that implied a set of armor, weapons, and training that resulted in a certain level of combat effectiveness. If you're going to push combat into the highly abstract realm where all fighting styles are identical mechanically, then perhaps you need to also homogenize weapon prices and weights.

WFRP does this, of course, to some degree. A "Hand weapon" has a set price, weight, and combat effect, regardless of whether it's a mace, sword, axe, or whatever. Then they use tags to build on top of this system (heavy, light, fast, entangling, long, etc). Some recent games (e.g. Dungeon World) have adopted tag systems like this; I think it's a solid approach as long as it doesn't get overly complex.

Louis Swallow: Good question. The answer is that there are still meaningful choices to be made in combat as to weapon-type which are not based on damage. Pole arms have reach. Daggers can be thrown. The DM can make all kinds of ad hoc rulings about creative things the players do with different weapons (e.g., trying to talk down an enemy and approaching, then quickly drawing a dagger and stabbing him; smashing a closed door with an axe to create an escape route; putting a spear shaft through a door handle to keep the door barred, etc.).

And I think you're underestimating players a little. People will want to carry a heavy, awkward glaive-guisarme into the dungeon because they think it's cool and "fuck you, that's why". I know I make equipment choices sometimes on that basis when I'm a player. Because I like to envisage my character hitting somebody in the face with a glaive-guisarme.

I think as far as cosmetic distinctions go, that's purely an area of player concern, rather than system concern. If the only weapon was "Weapon," and a player wanted to say "For me, this weapon is a two-bladed naginata" or "I'm carrying a rapier," that's totally fine.

I'd play it similarly to how the lack of mechanics for hair color in no way implies that players cannot choose their hair color. But I wouldn't spend game time asking everyone to go around describing their character's hair.

I agree with you that "tags" work as mechanical distinctions outside of damage, but I think the majority of the tags would still need to be directly combat-related to justify even giving players weapon choices.

What you say would be true if there were only cosmetic distinctions, but there aren't, as I pointed out. As an addition to that, on G+ somebody made the excellent point on the distinction between bows and slings that bows come with arrows and arrows are easily carried, sharp pointy objects with a multitude of uses including the delivery of fire. Differences like that are most certainly not just cosmetic distinctions.

"That is, the difference between a sword which does d8 damage and a dagger which does d4 damage is as plain as the nose on your face."

Unless of course you're playing with the variation where your to hit role varied radically based on the armor type of your opponent. I always found a certain enjoyment in considering the type of armor vs. the type of your attack, until of course the practicality of such a complicated system intruded itself, especially when playing with new people. It's the eternal battle between complexity and simplicity.

What if all weapons did d6 damage for all classes *except* fighter. In the hands of a fighter no weapon would do less than d6, but a longsword, battle axe, spear or mace could do d8 and a two-handed sword do d10 or some such.

I think the case for ad hoc rulings based on the "fluff is crunch" principle is a strong one. Rather than go to all the trouble of cluttering up rulebook and character sheet with modifiers allow the fiendishness of the player to give the stiletto a bonus in getting into armour chinks or allowing the warhammer to cave in someone's visor or the bill to hook someone off a horse etc. - on a case by case basis. I like the idea of player creativity rather than extra numbers making the character bristling with weapons an interesting option.

Reposting this from yesterday's one (hope that's OK; I was late to the party ...). In today's context, I think it's very obvious that a man with a sword enjoys a considerable advantage when he is facing a man with a only a dagger. Anyway, here's the case for the sword!

Interesting post (and great blog!) but I think you miss a few genuine advantages of swords.

First, they give greater reach than most "hand weapons". An one-handed sword is (generally) significantly longer than a one-handed battleaxe or mace, and has a much longer offensive area - perhaps the best part of a metre or more versus a few inches. Most importantly, that cutting edge can be deployed with the flick of a wrist, which avoids the swordsman having to expose his arm to a counterstrike. A mace- or axe-wielder has no choice. "Don't strike by bending your elbow" is one of the basic principles of sabre fencing, for good reason. If you do, you expose your forearm to quick counter-attacks. And a sword's long cutting edge makes it a better bet than an axe or mace if the fight ends up in grappling. You can grab an axe-haft more easily than a sword's blade.

Second, a sword is more versatile. It can cut and thrust, and the latter allows it to take full advantage of the reach advantage. A lunging swordsman could hope to run an axeman through while the latter was still "winding up".

Third, a sword offers much greater protection to its wielder's hand, through quillons at the very least and a basket hilt at best, as well as through the fact that there's no harmless haft. If you are wielding a bludgeon or an axe against a swordsman, your fingers are at far greater risk than his. There's a (hyperbolic) example in one of Moorcock's Elric books, when Elric slides Stormbringer down the haft of an axe, sending fingers flying. But it underscores a real advantage.

Plate armour (with gauntlets) negates most of this. But up until that stage, a swordsman has the edge (and the point). A shield also changes things; a swordsman and a mace-man are more evenly matched when they both have shields to parry with.

How to reflect all this in a game? I think a swordsman should get an advantage over opponents armed with other hand weapons (or even spears), both offensively or defensively, so long as those opponents are without heavy armour or a shield. That advantage might be quite considerable (+2? I'm not familiar with D&D mechanics), allowing sword-armed young aristocrats to feel quite safe on nights out on the town, despite the streets being full of thugs and bravos with daggers and cudgels. Should the same young aristocrats stumble into a raiding party of heavily armoured goblin soldiers with shields (Tolkien's Uruk-hai, for example), that sense of security would evaporate all too quickly ...

And there would be other implications. Swords would confer status *by dint of their mechanical virtues* in urban and other civilian settings. Can anyone carry one? Or just the high-born? Or do only the high-born generally carry them because they're expensive? Might adventures start off as bravos with cudgels who have to watch out for drunken aristos when "off duty"? Affording swords might be worth a few low-level adventures. And so on.

I'm sure you're right, but I'm equally sure that I don't want this kind of complex set of exceptions and bonuses in OD&D. I really like the idea of implementing these real life distinctions in other, more robust and concrete combat systems, don't get me wrong, but the abstraction of OD&D makes it a poor fit in my view and probably more trouble than it's worth.

Though I think magic swords preserve the primacy of the sword in a universal d6 damage world, I think the universal d6 damage world is beset by the vagaries of buying equipment at first level:

"One of the effects of variable weapon damage, he [Mornard] said, was to make weapon choice more plausible and meaningful. Before variable weapon damage, everyone was using the cheapest weapon possible - iron spikes! After variable weapon damage, fighters started using swords, which did 1d8 damage, or 1d12 against large monsters. Fighters with swords was a better mirror of history and heroic fantasy than fighters with daggers or iron spikes." (2nd paragraph in 'Character Classes', from http://blogofholding.com/?p=3814 )

If I can get 12 iron spikes for 1 gold, and make a plausible spear for another 1 gold with that 10' pole and a spike (plus 1 gold more for 50' rope if you want), and and have a (small) hammer for another 2 gold (which also does a d6 even though it's a household hammer, right?), why should I bother even with the 3 gold for a dagger when I have 12 "daggers" for 1 gold?? These figures are from the Moldvay Basic book.

You say, "That is, if there is no real mechanical difference between weapons, players have to consider other ways to distinguish between them. ..." Surely cost is a mechanical difference?

I admittedly don't know OD&D, but in every D&D game I've ever played I've been flabbergasted at the 40 (Basic) or 75 gold (3rd) for a longbow, compared to 10 (Basic) or 15 gold (3rd) for a longsword (preference for melee encoded in the rules or what? But my dad taught me via 'Baldur's Gate' that melee is for suckers!). And at first level I always go for the sling as a missile weapon because I can't afford the bow; if the sling always does the same d6 damage, I will NEVER 'upgrade' to the short or longbow (especially because slings can be used with shields ...). Unless I WANT to be Robin Hood, or find a magic bow ...

Interesting point of view, and it certainly is a nice way to make players think about their characters more.

Where I'm personally not convinced though is in there being anything wrong with the primary consideration of a weapon being the one which does more damage in a fight (as that, after all is a weapon's primary purpose). By removing variable damage you end up in a situation where the efficacy of the weapon doesn't play any part in the choices made by characters about their weapons - which just seems wrong to me somehow. But, fair enough - I'm not trying to convince you you're wrong! I'm just not sure personally.

By the way, thanks for writing the blog, and also engaging with posters - been following for a while, and it's a real pleasure.